Life is precarious for the approximately 2 million people who live in Nairobi’s informal settlements and slums. They make up over half the capital’s population yet are crammed into only 5 per cent of the city’s residential area and just 1 per cent of all land in the city. They are forced to live in inadequate housing and have little access to clean water, sanitation, healthcare, schools and other essential public services. They also live under the constant threat of forced eviction from the makeshift structures they have made their homes.

People have lived in slums in and around Nairobi since the city’s formation at the turn of the 20th century. Over the years, government responses have failed to ensure the state’s obligation to realize the human right to adequate housing. Recent government papers and policies have recognized the existence and continued growth of slums and informal settlements in Kenya, but not enough has been done to rectify decades of failure by the state to develop comprehensive and coherent policies to address lack of security of tenure and access to essential services in these settlements.

The experience of slum-dwellers starkly illustrates that people living in poverty not only face deprivation but are also trapped in that poverty because they are excluded from the rest of society, denied a say, and threatened with violence and insecurity.

Rights are the key for people to break out of the poverty trap. Put simply, respect for human rights demands inclusion, demands that everyone gets a say, demands that those in power protect people from threats to their security.

Amnesty International’s Demand Dignity Campaign, launched in May 2009, is exposing and combating the human rights violations that drive and deepen poverty. The campaign is initially focusing on a few key issues, including slums, which sharply demonstrate the connection between deprivation, insecurity, exclusion and denial of opportunities for participation by people in decisions that affect their lives. The overall goal of the campaign is to end the human rights violations that keep people poor. […]